Discussing Doris Lessing online

The Institute of the Future of the Book in London is launching an online discussion of "The Golden Notebook," Doris Lessing's 1962 novel. Seven writers, critics and scholars -- all women -- will be making notes alongside the text, generating discussion among themselves there and on a blog. Other readers can add their voices in the comments on the blog and in a discussion forum.

Lessing and HarperCollins have agreed to put the text, in its entirety, online for the project, which is pretty cool. So the "alongside" notes really will appear next to the text on the website. Organizer Bob Stein writes:

Fundamentally this is an experiment in how the web might be used as a space for collaborative close-reading. We don’t yet understand how to model a complex conversation in the web’s two-dimensional environment and we’re hoping this experiment will help us learn some of what we need to do to make this sort of collaboration as successful as possible. In addition to making comments in the margin, we expect that the readers will also record their reactions to the process in a group blog. In the public forum, everyone who is reading along and following the conversation can post their comments on the book and the process itself.

I'm curious to see how the discussion proceeds, and I wonder if the sophisticated interface will encourage dialogue. The discussion forums are well-integrated with the online text, and the notes from the official conversants appear as marginalia. When multiple notes appear, they have a visual hierarchy -- in the discussion of the text on Page 38, for example -- so you can tell who's responding to what.

The big challenge -- for me, at least -- is making time to read another 600+ page novel. But even if I can't keep up, I'll swing by to see how the collaborative close reading is coming along.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Comments

[Graham Beattie]

Great idea, I have put a link on my blog back to yours.
The Bookman.
www.beattiesbookblog.blogspot.com/